


Office Space

by Lokisgame



Series: Office Space [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 12:32:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11920980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokisgame/pseuds/Lokisgame
Summary: When Scully came to work with him, he didn't get her a desk so that he could keep her at arms length, away from his secrets.





	Office Space

When Scully came to work with him, he didn't get her a desk so that he could keep her at arms length, away from his secrets.  
He didn't trust her, but she found him when he lost a night chasing UFO’s and took him home, she bailed him out of jail and bought him breakfast when the Jersey Devil was terrorizing Atlantic City looking for a date, and then Jerry Lamana came in and he saw that look on her face, and he couldn’t do it anymore, it wasn’t fair, they were partners. 

So he went to the hardware store, bought some shelves, and went to the building manager about the room at the end of the hall, old copier room, now empty and unused. It had a little section behind a glass partition they could use and it had windows, skylights actually, but windows!  
It took a box of Swiss chocolates for the nice ladies in the maintenance department, but he managed to get the place cleaned up and painted while they went to Alaska on assignment. Turned out they gave the crew more than enough time to get things done before they got back from quarantine, and then the schedules got a little hectic, but finally, on a rainy Friday afternoon, when Scully had some business at Quantico to attend to, Mulder packed his stuff into boxes, and moved them to their new digs. 

For a six-pack of beer and a carton of smokes the guys who did the painting were kind enough to hang all the shelves he bought, move the filing cabinets and book cases and set up the worktables.  
Everything was second hand, pulled from storage by force and needed to be cleaned and dusted, but despite his efforts, he couldn’t find a second desk for Scully, and maintenance didn’t have the budget to buy a new one either. It was ironic, to be able to get this shiny new place but not that one last silly piece of office furniture. He got a table, but it wasn’t a desk.  
He felt bad on Saturday morning, when he hung up the massage boards behind the desk. He felt bad when he stood on top of it and wiped the skylights with a wet rag, seeing the light come in. He felt bad when he moved the cabinets and the desk a few inches to get the natural light hit it at least in the morning.  
Mulder tried to reason with himself, that the office wasn’t big enough, that it was just a temporary thing, that sharing would help them get to know each other better, a team building exercise so to speak.  
By the time he arranged all his books on the paranormal in order of comprehensiveness and frequency of use, he decided that if Scully didn’t complain about it until now, she won’t mind waiting a little while longer. And besides, he liked the idea of the two of them debating the cases in close quarters, she was great at verbal matches, very sharp, he liked that about her very much. And he knew which chair he’ll borrow (read steal) for her from his old place in the mean time. 

With the screen hung, Mulder set up the projector, moved the light box to the back room, along with some other equipment he got his hands on while raiding the FBI warehouse and storage, and started to work his way through the stacks of papers that came inside the boxes.  
Some of it were old reports and profile notes. Some of it were his notes and thoughts on cases he read about when he first found out about the X-Files two years ago. Mostly though, it was just doodles and trash that accumulated over time when you spent most of it on the phone, waiting for someone to answer on the other end of the line.  
He found quite a few pages written in narrow and sharp handwriting he was still trying to forget, but being a professional, he read them with a critical eye and gathered everything in one folder to be sorted and filed later with proper case. It got late, the sun went down hours ago, and he decided to call it a night. 

Sunday mornings were made for catching up on your reading. The stacks of papers that weren’t trash, held mostly old case files he started to read but got sidetracked, cross referencing and fact checking and looking for that other thing he read about the other day, when he was supposed to meet with that girl from the deli and totally forgot about it. Or that time he dropped everything and left in a hurry, because he remembered he promised The Gunmen he’ll show up for poker, just to come back on Monday and find something else dropped in his lap with a note URGENT stuck to the file. The whole grueling experience made him realize he needed a sustainable filing system, and one of these days he’d develop one, but for now all he had time for was to sort everything alphabetically, cockroaches under C, mothmen under M, and hope the key was logical enough for Scully to figure it out. 

Eating a sandwich for lunch he took a break, looking through prints he bought at the NASA souvenir shop, and tried to decide where to put them. His favorite “I Want To Believe” poster was already up, pinned to the cork board as a reminder to keep questioning and looking for the truth hidden in the X-files.  
The moon shots went behind the door, with a mental note to get Scully a name plaque along with the desk and ask if she wanted the M.D. on it as well.

The news clippings were sorted and relevant ones pinned back to the boards for future reference. It was late afternoon when a recent report caught his eye and Mulder decided to get some real work done, since he was almost finished with the clean up anyway.  
The sun went down as he read about cattle mutilations and exsanguination, and was about to start to look for slides when his phone chirped in his pocket.  
“Mulder”  
“You feeling lucky tonight?”  
“That depends on how many ones I’ve got in my wallet”  
“Get your ass over here, you need a life” Frohike said on the other end of the line.  
“Said a pot to a kettle, calling it black” Mulder chuckled but was already getting up and putting his jacket on.  
“Who you callin’ a pot”  
“Say pot again and you’ll have DEA on your back”  
The line went dead without as much as a goodbye and Mulder laughed to himself.  
He found a piece of paper, scribbled a few words on it and headed for the door. With his hand on the handle he took one long look at the work he had done.  
In the warm light of his desk lamp and the faint glow of the moon outside, the place didn’t look half bad. The two chairs facing each other on opposite sides of the desk stood waiting. A tennis court of ideas and theories, their office. Now he really felt like he had a partner. 

On his way to the elevator, he taped the note on the old office door, where his name plate used to be. The note said:  
_“X-Files Division - end of the hall”_

**Author's Note:**

> I've sent this as a prompt to someone, but never heard from them again, so decided to tackle the story myself. Thank you to [Mapping The X-Files](https://mappingthexfiles.tumblr.com/tagged/FBI+Files/page/2) on tumblr for photographic evidence and screencaps for reference.


End file.
